claimed to have found the golden plates
of the Book of Mormon in a hill-side in neighboring Manchester,--the
"Hill of Cumorah,"--to which he was led by angels. The plates were
written in characters similar to the masonic cabala, and he translated
them by divine aid, giving to the world the result of his discovery. The
Hebrew prophet Mormon was the alleged author of the record, and his son
Moroni buried it. The basis of Mormonism was, however, an unpublished
novel, called "The Manuscript Found," that was read to Sidney Rigdon
(afterwards a Mormon elder) by its author, a clergyman, and that
formulated a creed for a hypothetical church. Smith had a slight local
celebrity, for he and his father were operators with the divining-rod,
and when he appropriated this creed a harmless and beneficent one, for
polygamy was a later "inspiration" of Brigham Young--and began to preach
it, in 1844, it gained many converts. His arrogation of the presidency of
the "Church of Latter Day Saints" and other rash performances won for him
the enmity of the Gentiles, who imprisoned and killed him at Carthage,
Missouri, leaving Brigham Young to lead the people across the deserts to
Salt Lake, where they prospered through thrift and industry.

It was claimed that in the van of this army, on the march to Utah, was
often seen a venerable man with silver beard, who never spoke, but who
would point the way whenever the pilgrims were faint or discouraged. When
they reached the spot where the temple was afterwards built, he struck
his staff into the earth and vanished.

At Hydesville, near Palmyra, spiritualism, as it is commonly called, came
into being on March 31, 1849, when certain of the departed announced
themselves by thumping on doors and tables in the house of the Fox
family, the survivors of which confessed the fraud nearly forty years
after. It is of interest to note that the ground whence these new
religions sprang was peopled by the Onondagas, the sacerdotal class of
the Algonquin tribe, who have preserved the ancient religious rites of
that great family until this day.

A VILLAIN'S CREMATION

Bramley's Mountain, near the present village of Bloomfield, New York, on
the edge of the Catskill group, was the home of a young couple that had
married with rejoicing and had taken up the duties and pleasures of
housekeeping with enthusiasm. To be sure, in those days housekeeping was
not a thing to be much afraid of, and the servant question